


thoughts on a woman

by seemoreglass



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Introspection, Kilgrave is a walking trigger, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-15
Updated: 2015-12-15
Packaged: 2018-05-06 21:33:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5431538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seemoreglass/pseuds/seemoreglass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“As if you were on fire from within.</em>
  <br/>
</p>
<p> <em>The moon lives in the lining of your skin.”</em></p>
<p>A reflection on the moment when Kilgrave thinks he’d first fallen in love with Jessica.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thoughts on a woman

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, ao3! I'd like to make it clear that this fic is not meant to create the illusion of a healthy relationship. It is an obsessive relationship, and it's from the perspective of a man with no moral high ground and probably no idea of what love really is. Every aspect of the relationship described here is non-consensual. If this is looked at in the light I've intended it to be in, this is not a romantic one-shot, but an unsettling one told in a romantic fashion. 
> 
> I hope I've done such an empowering televised portrayal of abuse and women even a modicum of justice in this little fic.
> 
> All unbeta'd, so bear with me!

He supposes it was the moon that did it, in the end.

He hadn’t realized it properly at the time, being unfamiliar with the feeling. He’d stood there, watching her sleep, the hotel bed she lay on positioned below the window and the open curtains. The duvet covered her until it reached the flat plane of her stomach, where it gave way to a silky, short-sleeved purple sleep shirt. Her choice. _Well_ , it had been between that and a chemise, but still. She’d picked it out.

He loved it when she slept. Hours when he didn’t have to tell her to do anything. Quite often, his control over her would wear off during her sleep, and she’d always be none the wiser, sleeping soundly and all wrapped up in blankets that smelled like him. She adored him of her own accord, deep down. He was sure of it. So was her body whenever he fucked her.

It wasn’t her relaxed face, painted with dreams rather than that thin mask of tension always visible when she was conscious, that got to him like it so often did when he rolled over in the night and looked at her. It was her hair, fanned out on her pillow and as black as deep space. If her hair was a void, her pink mouth was a nebula and her hazel eyes – then shut in sleep – were planets, teeming with life. Her smile was the sun.

And _skin_.

Bloody hell, in the middle of the night like this, with the full moon shining on that pale skin, he’d swear to God that she glowed. She was fucking holy, his Jessica. Celestial. Meant to be worshipped. The artificial New York City lights didn’t cast anything on her; their hotel room, on the top floor, was so high up that just the moon shone down.

Good. The moon was all that was worthy of a creature like her.

He knew that he wasn’t worthy of her either. He didn’t care. He pretended that he was worthy of a Jessica Jones, because he could and because he felt like it. Besides, he was powerful and exceptional enough. No one came as close to deserving her as he did. There’s no point in dwelling on it; this was his lot in life, and he was going to take advantage of it. Worthiness be damned.

As he stood there, glass of water in hand, clock ticking for three in the morning, he knew that he wouldn’t mind pretending for the rest of his days. No longer could he picture a life in which there wasn’t a raven-haired Artemis sleeping in his bed, giving him sunlight with her smiles and moonlight with her skin. No longer could he imagine _enjoying_ a life without her. She was something he could easily devote his entire existence to. Why not? There was nothing else like her, nothing as good as she was. Physically, she was absolutely supernal, and her personality was an expanding supernova that constantly challenged and intrigued him like nothing else did. He wondered if she had gotten too close to the sky during one of her jumps and came back down with stardust in her lungs. He’d never get bored of her, never want to leave her.

She needed him. Most people did, really, the pathetic sods, but Jessica was the first person that he genuinely _wanted_ to need him. If it hadn’t been for his intervention, she’d probably still be marching around New York City in cargo boots, not half drunk as she pretended that she should save people and be a hero. As if being a hero was ever about the saving of the good and not about the hypocritical, sanctimonious conquering of the bad. She was smarter than that, his Jessica. She just needed him to help her realize it.

He admired her sleeping form and he wanted to be so close to her then, close enough that he could spread himself inside her body. Just crawl inside her saintly skin and blossom. Possess her at an even deeper level, make himself not an extension of her, nor her an extension of him, but each of them indistinguishable from the other. She’d fall asleep when he closed his eyes. It would be a benediction.

But, fine, he’d just take what he could get.

So he set his glass of water on the nightstand and crept back into bed beside her. His hand hovered over her hesitantly, wanting to touch her but not wanting to disturb the beauty of such an ethereal sight. Suddenly, this little universe of theirs, made out of bed sheets and sleepy sighs and soft pillows, felt incredibly fragile. She and him and them and _this_ were all too precious and too important to be considered candidly. Even the moon, he was sure, was holding its breath, preserving the moonlight that reflected off her skin and made her into a spectacle for him, only him, to witness. He felt like he should put this instance of time and space inside of a bell jar, to be protected and conserved until clocks stopped ticking.

Then she hummed and turned into him absently, restless in her dreamland, and he let his hand fall onto the side of her face, caressing her ear and her hair and, oh, yes, he knew.

~*~

Looking back, he understands that, at the time, he had recognized that emotion as only a feeling that he hadn’t had before; something to explore and to enjoy. His love for Jessica was simply a curiosity. In the following weeks, he’d expressed his interest very clearly, and the marks on her neck and inner thighs and the scratches on his back served as proof. Sometimes they didn’t even leave their bed until it was past noon.

It had all been just a scintilla of affection compared to what he felt for her now. Ideally, it wouldn’t have taken her leaving him to die on the pavement for him to realize that he’d spent the past six months falling in love with her. But that’s okay. He’ll make up for it later. He’ll wait. He can be patient. If the stars have to fucking align, then so be it.

Because his celestial woman is worth waiting for. He won’t like it, but he’ll wait as long as he has to. She’s powerful and strong and angry and he’s pretty sure another superpower of hers is lighting hearts on fire because he’s seen the way people look at her and he feels it himself and he is never never never going to let her go. He’ll destroy the entire bloody city if that’s what it will take for her to understand that they belong together. Her and him. They will be together, he and Jessica, and the two of them will equate to something greater than they once were.

First, he has a house to buy.

_We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,_

_Me and you._

**Author's Note:**

> And that's that. This is the first time I've ever written or posted fanfiction. Posting my writing feels like a rather large invasion of privacy, but I'm quite attracted to the challenge of this ship and I felt like sharing it. If I get some positive feedback on this, I might start an actual multichapter story.
> 
> The lines in the summary are from the soul-crushingly beautiful Pablo Neruda (there's actually a couple Neruda references), and the lines at the end are from Sylvia Plath, whose clear vowels rise like balloons.


End file.
